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Whenever Namjoon was young, about seven years old, he was chosen to be the class president of his tiny school in a suburban district of Seoul.
He remembers it now. He paraded up in his little grey shorts and his jumper, proudly pinning the tin badge to his chest and writing his name in chalk on the little space provided, his handwriting still shaky and uncertain but confident as anything in his ability to lead.
“This is a lot of responsibility,” his teacher told him, smiling down at him all the same. “Can you handle it?”
“I’m responsible,” he’d said, all dimples and crooked teeth and chubby cheeks, and he’d poked his thumb into his chest. “Just you wait! I’ll be the best class president you’ve ever seen.”
Someone says they can’t see the point of Rap Monster. His name is stupid, they say. Their location pinpoints them in Nebraska, USA.
Their twitter handle is @taehofortaeyo and their screen name is #VOTEFORBTS and the tweet is a picture of the new album, which they must have just ordered; their hand, a mellow peach colour, the colour they always pretend Namjoon is in those magazine photos, holds the three unsigned photocards and the signed one - it just so happens to be Namjoon. He remembers signing his own face until he never wanted to see it again, ink all over his fingers and his wrists, just hoping that someone somewhere will get pleasure from it.
I can’t believe i got fcuking kim namjoon, says #VOTEFORBTS, from Nebraska, USA.
Namjoon learned the English language when he was fifteen and had as much control over his limbs as a bad puppet master. He’s always been smart, good at picking things up and sticking at it for a few months until he’s good at it, good at continuing to practice and develop and work under his own steam - slowly but steadily.
“Work at maths,” his mother scolds, tapping his closed textbook. “Yah, Kim Namjoon!”
He pulls the headphones from over his ears, the sounds continuing out of them. The Korean language says - saranghae. The English language says - love. The Korean language says - miwo. The English language says - hate. “What? I’m working at English!”
“You need to work to pass the exam, not to know the language,” she knocks her hand against the textbook curtly; she loves him, she supports him, but she doesn’t understand why he’d put so much effort into something he doesn’t need.
“You don’t understand,” he whines.
Hip cocked, dishcloth in her free hand, she scoffs and looks twenty years older. “What don’t I understand?”
“When I’m a famous musician, I need to know English so I can read what compliments my American fans send me! America! I’m going to go there someday, and speak English to the American girls.”
She laughs and the dishcloth whaps him across the back of the head. “Math, Kim Namjoon. Learn English after we eat.”
Jimin is on his third day of a crash diet when he staggers against the mirrored wall and slides to the floor, his legs shaking.
Five minutes later he passes out.
Namjoon carries him to the dorms, leaves him in Seokjin’s arms to tuck to bed, and calls the dietician that works for Jimin, Jeongguk, and Taehyung. He shouts himself hoarse down the phone line and then stays up all night, just in case Jimin wakes up and wants someone, and in the morning he prepares breakfast and smiles when they all tease him for the underdone eggs.
Jimin eats four of them, runny yolk and all.
Namjoon goes to the bathroom and locks himself in there and waits until his eyes don’t look red anymore, and then he goes to dance practice.
Bang Shihyuk sits him down one day.
Namjoon perches on a chair; Bang leans against one of the benches in the studio, looking unusually grave, and his heart sinks in his chest. Ever since they’ve gotten popular, ever since people have begun to give them side glances in the street, he’s known this conversation was coming, but he wishes - he wishes - he’d been given just a little more time.
“Namjoon,” says Bang. (They formed the band together, a squinting kid through blocky glasses, a disillusioned JYP composer, and it can’t be any easier for Bang to say than it is for Namjoon to hear.)
He kicks a box accidentally. Apologises. Clears his throat. “Um… you wanted to see me?”
There are two producers in the room and he wishes they’d just go away.
“Yah, kid, I have a question for you.”
“Mm.”
“Bangtan Boys or a solo career?”
Namjoon is prepared for the question, he has been since their first MV dropped, but all the same he twists his fingers together and stares at his knees, willing the fire behind his eyes to go away. “I- Bangtan. Bangtan.” What is Bang doing? Drawing it out like this when he’s clearly just working up to kicking Namjoon out?
“Yah. Kid. Look at me.”
The producers are quiet. Why do they stare so?
Namjoon looks up - Bang’s face is stolid and flat and he can’t pull anything from it no matter how he searches, eyes scratching from eyes to nose to lips to try and find some tell of a horrible joke, something that says this isn’t real.
“Namjoon,” Bang says quietly, leaning forward and Namjoon knows he can see the tears now, prickling the corners of his eyes, “Solo or Bangtan?”
“B-Bangtan,” Namjoon mumbles. He pinches his leg. “Bangtan.”
And then the door is banging open and his heart is alive once more and Seokjin’s arms are around his neck and Taehyung is screeching are you crying?! And when the camera is switched off, Bang touches his shoulder. “I’m sorry, kid,” he says, smiling, “But you gotta know by now how goddamn important you are.”
“Aish, old man, never do that to me again,” Namjoon says and punches his shoulder. If he’s still wiping away tears -
When he first meets Jeongguk, he is sixteen and Jeongguk is all of thirteen, a terrible haircut and sticky-out teeth and the strong hint of Busan whenever he opens his mouth to whisper, to stammer, to hide behind his hair from his elders.
Everyone at the meeting is his elder.
“Yah, kiddo, my name’s Namjoon,” says Namjoon, smiling down at him.
Jeongguk is small and squeaky and jumps when he’s directly addressed. “I-I’m Jeon Jeongguk,” he stammers, and his cheeks stain bright red. “Y-you’re the - um, Rap Monster.”
“Yeah,” Namjoon nods, and tells the selection team (later, when the trainees have traipsed home) that if the kid from Busan doesn’t get into the final candidates list, he’s walking. He’s not sure even now if Jeongguk remembers that meeting, but he does. There’ll always be a scared kid hiding behind Jeongguk as he is now.
It makes Namjoon responsible.
Yoongi doesn’t tell anyone he isn’t sleeping until one day they all go out for a meal. Yoongi gets up to go to the bathroom, and after fifteen minutes Namjoon makes a joke about getting flushed down the toilet and goes to check on him.
He finds Yoongi crumpled on the floor, the bruises of insomnia under his eyes and the proof of anxiety worried into bleeding grooves on his fingers.
He wonders why he never notices that something is wrong until his members faint on him, and then he brings Yoongi to hospital, because if the fucker’s been neglecting one part of him the chances are he hasn’t been eating or drinking or acting like a human enough either.
He sleeps next to the bed they keep Yoongi in overnight for check-ups, and when Seokjin comes to relieve him his eyes are rounded and their own colour and there is half a pack of tissues damp and empty into the wastebin.
The nurse collects them on her rounds.
Namjoon goes to the hospital cafeteria and gets himself some coffee, and tea for Seokjin.
They watch a film. Namjoon doesn’t know what it is. He’s tired.
He wakes up because Taehyung and Jimin are screeching the lyrics to the pop song playing over the credits, and because Seokjin is trying to calm them down and failing, and because Hoseok is trying to rap along to the words. Then he laughs and sends them all to bed and all but crumples into his own.
His head hurts.
“I love you, hyung.”
I just made you hot chocolate, kiddo, what are you-”
Taehyung snatches his hand, eyes wide and yearning and at five in the morning Namjoon has learnt to sit down on the bed when someone looks at him like that. He will always be ready to listen.
“I just really love you.”
“Are you feeling okay?”
Taehyung makes a noise in his throat, like he’s angry Namjoon won’t listen even though he is. “Hyung, I don’t have to be sick to know I love you. Just… lay down with me a while? I’m cold.”
“No, you’re not,” says Namjoon, but he obeys when Taehyung snatches his second pillow and props it underneath Namjoon’s head.
They’re bigger than they were, and older, too.
“Lay with me, hyung.”
When Taehyung was sixteen and he missed his grandmother; when Namjoon was seventeen and used to sleeping alone, they curled up together and fell asleep, skinny and lanky and easily fitting into one thin dorm bed.
Their hot chocolate cooled on the bedside locker.
Their hot chocolate cools on the bedside locker.
Jeongguk is crying and laughing and eating birthday cake with a party hat shoved onto his head. “Hyung, you shouted so much!” He says, wiping his tears with the back of his hand. “I was so - I was so scared you’d say I was going to leave-”
“Ah, kid, don’t you know how goddamn important you are?” Namjoon ruffles his hair and the guilt of making him cry - he’s a baby, for god’s sakes - is counteracted by Bang Shihyuk, hugging them both with the sort of awkward fatherliness that he tries to carry at all times.
“I’m glad you weren’t, hyung,” says Jeongguk. There’s a tear hanging from the end of his nose. “I think… if I left Bangtan, I would die.”
“Me too,” Namjoon mumbles. “Sorry, kiddo.”
“Have some cake, hyung, and don’t apologise.”
“Maknae doesn’t tell the leader what to do,” grins Namjoon, and accepts a plate.
Namjoon wakes up on a Monday and his head feels like sandpaper. Bang Shihyuk is good about giving them breaks when they want them - it’s not like they’re overworked idols from some horrible country that sees them for their voices alone, Bang PD has grown up with them and cares for them far more, but it’s just a headache.
“Good morning,” Seokjin says when Namjoon finally gets up. His voice is quiet. Soothing. His hand strokes along the back of Namjoon’s neck. “Are you okay?”
Namjoon grunts. “Yeah, I’m fine. What are we doing today?”
“Just… a free day, pretty much, I think. Dance practice for a while, then a meeting with the concept design team…” Seokjin pulls on his trousers as he’s doing so; Namjoon opens his phone and begins to browse Twitter, reading the comments from Korean and in English with the same gloomy mood.
They’re not even negative comments.
The sandpaper hurts. At the front, just behind his forehead - busy workers rubbing industriously against his brain. “Anything after the design team?”
“No.”
“God, good.”
“Why?”
Namjoon could tell Seokjin, could wash away the downturn to his lips.
“Ah, it’s nothing, I just couldn’t be bothered to go to any more meetings today.”
Namjoon goes to a meeting on a Monday and spends two hours convincing a stylist that no, he doesn’t think Jimin should do an accidentally-on-purpose strip tease ending with him showing his abs to the camera. Jimin doesn’t have abs anymore, not after the crash diet.
Namjoon doesn’t like arguments, contrary to popular belief. Bang is away on a meeting - he’s arranging auditions for some time in the New Year, now their company is big enough to really fit another act under their belt - and so it’s up to Namjoon, mostly (with Seokjin’s hand on his, a comfort) to fight to stop Jimin becoming the blatant sex doll the stylistic team obviously think he should be.
Namjoon feels sick on a Monday and it has nothing to do with the food Seokjin has made and everything to do with the tiny sandpapering man behind his forehead, joined now by the tiny argumentative man somewhere in his stomach.
When Namjoon was very small, his favourite superhero was Spiderman. He bought the film but he always skipped half an hour in.
“Mary-Jane,” Peter would say earnestly, “I am Spiderman.”
“Joonie, you skipped the bit with Uncle Ben,” said his cousin when he came around to Namjoon’s house. “Joonie, that’s his whole character arc.”
(His cousin was fifteen and wore big glasses and was working on becoming an analytical literature student and had a very whiny voice.)
Namjoon sat back in the sofa, his arms folded, watching Mary-Jane swing around and cling desperately to Spiderman’s shoulders, completely huffing with his cousin. “Don’t care about those. Don’t like Uncle Ben.”
His cousin flailed and flapped, his hands bouncing up and down like they were only limply connected to his body. “But motivation-”
“He goes on and on and on about responserbilly, and I don’t like it,” Namjoon had said, and back then that had been enough.
Namjoon falls asleep in the car, his head on Seokjin’s shoulder, and when he performs he feels sluggish and dead. He’s always had control over his own responsibilities, but he’s really -
He’s just tired.
They watch a film. Namjoon doesn’t know what it is. He’s tired.
He wakes up with the TV switched off and the others talking quietly over his head; Jimin is curled into his side, warming him, and his head is in Seokjin’s lap, long, delicate fingers brushing soothingly against his scalp.
“Joonie,” says Seokjin on a Friday, sweating a little to try and push their beds together, “I’ve told the others not to wake you up tomorrow, okay? We don’t have any meetings and you came to bed late last night.”
“You didn’t have to mention it to them,” Namjoon says with a little grumbling, shoving his own bed up against Seokjin’s - by mutual agreement, they’re going to sleep in the same bed, because Namjoon (and Seokjin) both tend to drop off with a warmth beside him.
(A specific warmth? Has Namjoon come to those terms yet?)
“I didn’t mention it to them.” Seokjin gives him a Look as he slides between the sheets, holding one arm up to get Namjoon in too. “Hoseok said I wasn’t allowed to wake you for breakfast.”
“Hoseok worries too much.”
“Turn off the light.”
Namjoon complies and gets into bed, Seokjin’s hands wrapping around his forearms immediately. Unlike Namjoon, Seokjin’s never had a problem initiating the late-night cuddling, for which Namjoon is kind of eternally grateful, thinking he’d probably be super awkward about the entire thing and end up accidentally flinging himself out a window.
“Joonie, go to sleep.”
Namjoon wakes up on a Saturday, an hour past noon.
Bang PD-nim is his name amongst those that know him in passing, an unassuming man in brightly coloured shirts. “Yah, kid,” he calls down to the studio one day, and Namjoon looks askance at the two producers sitting in the room with him. “Namjoon, you there?”
“Huh? Sorry, I zoned out,” Namjoon says apologetically. He narrows his eyes at the producers; for the life of him, he doesn’t know why they’re here.
“We were gonna plan out some things. Your solo career, for a start,” says Bang Shihyuk, a notepad in front of him. “When will you have the tracks ready?”
“Oh my god, any time you like,” Namjoon springs into action excitedly, his mind whirling. “I have so many songs, so many tracks, anytime you like.”
Bang says something that sounds like at least you’re not crying this time, and laughs into the back of his hand when Namjoon asks him what’s wrong. “Nothing, kid,” he says, clapping Namjoon on the shoulder. “I’m just proud, is all.”
Namjoon is scrolling down twitter when he sees @hoeseokshoeshiok tweet about how, really, Rap Monster shouldn’t have been allowed in BTS.
He scrolls further.
@grinningcutie0392: namjoon makes more people happy than u ever will
@sevenseoks: if i got rapmon photocard i would cry hes my bias
And then he turns his phone off, and goes out the door of his dorm room to ruffle Taehyung’s hair and kiss Seokjin tentatively on the cheek and joke around with Hoseok.
“Good morning,” says Seokjin.
“It is,” says Namjoon, and he smiles, and the morning is a good one.